


Bucky Barnes and the Embarrassment of Spidermen

by AggressiveWhenStartled



Series: The Old Codgers Greatest Hits Album [2]
Category: Captain America - All Media Types, Marvel Cinematic Universe, Spider-Man - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Awkwardness, Babysitting, Dinosaurs, Domestic, Drama Llama Peter Parker, Established Relationship, I already wrote this and it's impervious to any Infinity Stone or whatever tomfoolery, M/M, Multiverse, No Spoilers, Not Avengers: Endgame (Movie) Compliant, Winter Soldier: Super Homemaker
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-04-27
Updated: 2019-07-29
Packaged: 2020-02-08 13:30:29
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 15,081
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18624226
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AggressiveWhenStartled/pseuds/AggressiveWhenStartled
Summary: “Peter,” Steve said into the table. “Please tell me you didn’t bring home someone from Tony’s alternate dimension.”“Of course I didn’t,” Peter said, looking indignant. “I wouldn’t do that. I brought him to your place.”





	1. Chapter 1

Bucky had finally, _almost_ , gotten to sleep, when someone started pounding on their door like they were trying out every secret knock at once in the hopes of magically hitting on the right combination.

Bucky blinked. Well. Well, he had been awake already, sort of. Mostly. Not very happy about it, but staring at the ceiling wishing diazepam worked on supersoldiers. Awake didn’t mean lucid or cognizant of his surroundings, though, so it took awhile for the frantic asshole at the door to make it through the noise in Bucky’s own head.

Normally Bucky’s go to method of dealing with late night visitors was to ignore things until it pissed Steve off enough that he took care of it instead, but Stark Jr had called with something about dimensions and the end of the world “but, you know. Minor,” which didn’t sound very good, and Bucky had been happy enough to stay well away. It was an even toss up whether Stark had caused the problem in the first place, and with interactions as tense as they were between the two of them, it was probably best Bucky kept far, far away. 

Probably the knockers weren’t HYDRA or AIM or whatever trying to lull him into a false sense of security with manners. Bucky glared at the ceiling. After trying Plans B (wishing really hard whoever it was would go away) and C (destroying them with as-yet-undiscovered brain powers), he finally tossed back the warm covers, staggered out to the front door and opened it. 

Two fucking Spiderkids blinked back at him against the hall light. The one on the right somehow looked _even smaller_ than Parker. 

Bucky wondered if he could call someone to get AIM out front instead.

“Hi! Sergeant Barnes! Sir!” Peter squeaked. The smaller Spider Minor did the eye thing that meant he was frowning under the mask, squinted at Bucky, and did a double take. “Everything’s fine, we’re fine, we just need a place to stay for like. A little bit.”

Bucky stared at them. 

“Mi...man. Spider _man_ apparently has some issues with a rich dude with a lot of technology and political ties where he’s from so he’s not so keen on the tower is all,” Peter babbled in the face of the silence. “We just. It’s just for tonight. Probably. Maybe. I mean it might be just tonight. It could get fixed tomorrow, you never know.”

The other spider gave him a look that showed pretty clearly how much he doubted they would only be staying for the evening. 

Peter was going to sweat through his suit. “I mean you do know,” he said desperately. “I mean we know. We both know. It’s only for tonight. Just one night! Tonight is even almost over. So only like, a half night.”

Bucky squinted.

“Probably,” Peter said.

The other kid looked like he was trying to project responsibility and earnestness as hard as he could. Bucky didn’t move.

Peter hopped on one foot, obviously working as hard as he could not to climb up the side of Bucky’s house with anxiety. He made a miserable, defeated noise, looked back at the other spider, and finally played his trump card. “And I don’t want to put Aunt May in danger with anyone who might be following us around.”

Bucky frowned. “You tried that one last week,” he argued, but it was over. Peter _had_ tried it last week, and it had worked, and Peter and Bucky both knew it was a sure bet. The two Spiders sensed weakness and perked right up, so Bucky just opened the door and waved them in the direction of the guest room before going back to fucking bed. 

***

It only took four hours, at most, before something crashed in the next room over. Bucky startled awake, remembered who he’d let in the night before, and groaned into the pillow. The spiders were both hissing at each other in the anxious, high pitched tones Peter had when he’d messed up and was hoping no one else would notice. Nice to know it was universal. 

Steve made a tired noise next to him and rolled over, so he’d apparently come in at some point during the night. There were some more crashes from the guest room.

“It just—it just _happens_ sometimes, I don’t have… I’m not _trying_ to—”

“Nonononono don’t pull don’t—” there was a crunching sound. Bucky blinked. 

“Did you invite Spiderman over without telling me about it again,” Steve mumbled into the pillow. He couldn’t have gotten much sleep yet, but Bucky felt no remorse. Steve had absolutely brought home worse things than Peter Parker. Bucky couldn’t think of any at the moment, but on the other hand Steve had brought _Bucky_ home when he was still living with Sam, and Sam still hadn’t entirely forgiven him for it.

“You _broke_ it!” Peter wailed in the next room over. “Why did you _break_ it? We are going to get ourselves killed!”

“I didn’t mean to!”

“Sorta,” Bucky admitted, giving a half shrug Steve didn’t even have his eyes open to see. “Kinda. He showed up on the doorstep in the middle of the night, and when I walked away and went back to bed he came in after me.”

“How do you fix walls?” Peter was asking shrilly, over the scuffling. “How fast can you fix walls? Hold on. Hold on. Can we fix walls with spiderwebs? _Why didn’t you just let go first?_ ”

“I can’t sometimes! Not always!” the other voice said, sounding _really young_. “Only when I’m nervous. I’m good normally but if I’m nervous I sometimes don’t...unstick?”

There was a short silence. Then, “Uh,” Peter said. “You know, I’m nervous an _awful lot_. Are you...also nervous an awful lot?”

“Yeah,” The other kid said. “That’s...definitely been a problem.”

Steve frowned and pulled a pillow over his head, paused, then pulled back enough to manage a bloodshot squint at Bucky from underneath it. “Are there _two_ kids in there?” he demanded muzzily. Behind him, there were more bumps and crashes, and some frantic whispering that sounded like a pair of teenagers looking up how to patch drywall with bug spit online. One of them was apparently sticking to the phone a lot, which wasn’t helping matters.

“Maybe,” Bucky said. “I wasn’t gonna let in one and not the other, I guess. That’s the kind of thing that spreads the word that you’re inhospitable.”

They listened to the spiderbabies panic for a little while.

“We just finished the guest room,” Bucky said, grinding the heels of his hands into his eyes. “Didn't we. We just mounted the last shelf.”

“I don’t care,” Steve decided, his voice muffled by the pillow. “I don’t care. I’m staying in bed. They can destroy what they want. I’m going back to sleep.”

“Oh no,” someone said, and there was a thunderous crash and the sound of two bodies scuttling across the ceiling.

Bucky sighed and dragged himself out of bed.

***

“Is that actually, like, for real the real Sergeant James Barnes?” Spidertwo whispered to Spiderone as they heaped eggs and bacon into their teenaged maws at a rate that was genuinely impressive, even to a super soldier. “Like, for actually real?”

Peter sounded like he was thinking about it. “I mean, probably,” he whispered back, a little quieter but still audible from the kitchen where Bucky was making more food. “I guess we can’t be 100% sure he isn’t a Hydra clone? Like. They could have switched him in cryostasis and we wouldn’t actually know.”

Bucky, who had been around that mental merry go round himself on more than one sleepless night spent questioning his own humanity, cleared his throat and started in on the waffles. He hadn’t braved checking the guestroom yet, since he wasn’t sure his blood pressure could take it even with the superserum; he’d just started making food and let the cooking smells lure both out into the open. The little one had stared at him, dumbstruck, mouth gaping until Peter had helpfully crammed a bite of eggs into it. 

“I guess Captain Rogers is almost definitely himself, though,” Peter mused. “And he seems pretty sure about Sergeant Barnes, so.” 

“ _Captain America is alive too??_ ”

“NO.” Captain America shouted at them from the bedroom. It sounded like the pillow was still over his head. 

“Captain America is trying to sleep,” Bucky explained, making his way into the dining room and putting a plate of waffles in front of either boy. He had to move back quickly to make sure he kept what appendages he had left as the kids descended on them. “He’s got super hearing.”

“ _Captain America is in the other room???_ ” Spidertwo yelped, and choked on his waffle. Peter slapped him on the back, which even a veteran from World War II knew you weren’t really supposed to do anymore when people were choking, but Spidertwo eventually recovered enough to burrow into his breakfast again. Bucky shrugged and went back into the kitchen to make his own breakfast.

Peter hissed something _almost_ quiet enough not to bother Steve, but _just_ not quiet enough—the perfect volume to leave a supersoldier straining to make it out and mad about it. Spidertwo whispered something back, and then there was a crash from the bedroom like Steve had thrown something at the wall. Both kids’ chairs scraped against the floor.

Bucky sighed, ducked his head through the doorway, and looked up. Both of them were hanging wide-eyed from the ceiling.

“Don’t whisper,” he advised, stealing some of their bacon. “Just talk normally. Whispering is a lot more annoying.”

Peter nodded and swallowed, but Spidertwo looked the most abjectly horrified Bucky had ever seen a teenager look. “I’m so sorry sir,” the kid said at a very careful volume, about one scale level up from normal. “I will not whisper anymore. I did not mean to bother you or Captain Rogers.”

Bucky eyeballed him for a minute, then gave up and went back into the kitchen.

“You don’t gotta get so scared about it,” Peter confided once Bucky was gone. “He mostly doesn’t murder _anyone_ anymore. He gets really grumpy if you break his stuff but he always gives me food when I come by and he does pretty much anything my aunt May asks him to.”

“It’s just he’s a _war hero_ and wait murder??”

Steve made an exhausted, miserable noise as he recognized his cue to defuse yet another ‘wait what do you MEAN the Winter Soldier is here, has anyone mentioned this to the police’ situation and stumbled out of bed. 

“Quit helping,” Bucky admonished, leaning back in and pointing a spatula at Peter. “He can be as scared as he wants to be. You,” he said, pointing the spatula at Spidertwo, “have nothing to worry about, since I only murder adults and you look even younger than Spiderbaby here.”

“Uh,” said Spidertwo.

Steve staggered into the dining room, rubbing his face like maye if he got enough blood circulating it would be the same as six hours of sleep. “Don’t call 911,” he mumbled around a jaw-cracking yawn. He tripped and managed the fall only just enough to land in a chair, which creaked under the stress. “911 knows already. People keep calling them and the local dispatchers have it in their planned responses now.”

“ _Uh_ ,” said Spidertwo.

Steve nodded sagely, his meat shovel hands still over his face and ruining the effect, and then paused. He parted his fingers and peered at Spidertwo.

“What’s your name?” Steve asked suspiciously.

“Miles,” Apparently Miles chirped.

“Not ‘Peter’,” Steve asked, frowning, and Peter started making frantic ‘shut up’ motions at Miles.

“No way,” Miles swore, crossing his heart. “Peter Parker was the last Spiderman. And he was like. Old. And White.”

Peter smacked Miles in the arm. Miles jumped, glared at him, and shoved him. Peter shoved back, and Steve watched them start an actual cartoon slapfight before sighing and dropping his head onto the table.

Bucky figured at least if they destroyed the ceiling he’d have a good reason to get rid of the terrible popcorn finish.

“Peter,” Steve said into the table. “Please tell me you didn’t bring home someone from Tony’s alternate dimension.”

“Of course I didn’t,” Peter said, looking indignant. “I wouldn’t do that. I brought him to your place.”

***

“I’m going back to the tower,” Steve yawned twenty minutes later, dragging on his leather jacket and knocking back coffee like the placebo effect would do anything for his exhaustion. “I need you to make sure they stay here and don’t wander off. How did they even get out here? What kind of superheroing happens in _Westchester_?”

“We’re in Westchester. Xavier’s school is in Westchester,” Bucky said, shrugging. He eyed Steve’s meandering trajectory towards his bike. “Should I call you a cab?”

“We’re only in Westchester because you want to lord it over all our asshole neighbors from the tenements and your gran,” Steve mumbled around a yawn. “All of whom are either dead or have no idea you’re here. Otherwise we’d never set foot in Westchester.” 

“I also want to impress my dad,” Bucky admitted. He narrowed his eyes as Steve stumbled a little. “No, seriously. Maybe a cab.”

Steve waved vaguely at Bucky, then made a noise that sounded like ‘I’m fine’ but through a mouth too tired to open. “Cabs are for Westchester swanks,” Steve managed eventually. 

Bucky rolled his eyes. “You’re one of us now too, Steve. By marriage. Let me call my trophy wife a cab.”

“Just gotta… just gotta make it to the tower. It’s good. I’m good.” Steve threw a leg over his motorcycle and nearly toppled over the other side.

“Yeah,” Bucky said, taking out his phone. “No.”

Steve leaned over onto the handlebars and almost fell asleep. He jerked back upright and shook his head, then pointed at Bucky. “Don’t let them set New York on fire,” he ordered. “If we’re going to get this sorted out, we need to keep them from going off on their own and causing new trouble.”

“Got it,” Bucky promised, opening the stupid fuschia app. “Spiderbabies are grounded. I’m on it. What’s going on at the tower?”

Steve tried to look anguished. “I can’t tell you,” he said, making his eyes real big and biting his lip. Bucky didn’t budge. Steve was bad at lying even when he was at his best, fresh off a mission with Natasha and her constant private coaching. This lying was... not that. “I promised Tony I’d leave you out of it.”

“Bullshit.” Bucky pausing halfway through the rideshare process to give that the look it deserved. “Howard’s kid _thinks_ you promised. You said something that _sounded_ like you promised, but with your fingers crossed behind your back.”

Steve slumped back down over his bike and closed his eyes.. “Well. Maybe not the fingers.”

Bucky raised his eyebrows and waited.

“I’m going to stick with it until I can’t, though,” Steve slurred, and fell asleep on his motorcycle.

Bucky frowned, contemplated kicking the bike over, and added ‘make sure to pull up right next to the garage and just *lean* on your horn’ to the notes section for the taxi.

***

“We want to go to the park,” Peter told Bucky when they had all gotten over the blasting horn sending everyone in the house, even the supersoldier expecting it, at least three feet into the air.

Bucky paused in the middle of his shopping list, pen halfway to his mouth. They went through enough food in the house when they _weren’t_ hosting superpowered teenagers. “What?

“We want to go to the park,” Miles said, shifting a little and looking anywhere but Bucky’s face. “To. Play.”

“How old are you?” Bucky asked, squinting at him.

Miles shuffled his feet a little until Peter elbowed him. “Fifteen,” he clearly lied through his teeth. Peter nudged him again, and Miles elbowed back. “Thirteen,” he admitted. “I’m a...kid. Who. Likes to play at the park.”

“The only playground at the park near us is meant for kids under three,” Bucky told him. He set the pen down and leaned back, crossing his arms. “There aren’t any basketball courts or baseball diamonds. There’s just a paved nature walk and safety swings.”

Miles looked like he wanted to die. “Great,” he managed, almost choking on the words. “I want to. Explore. In nature.”

“Not, like, play stickball or basketball or whatever like teenagers do nowadays,” Bucky clarified, raising an eyebrow. “You want to go to the woodsy area and play around in the trees.”

“Yes,” Miles said, looking like it was costing five years of his life.

***

It was the sudden spike of panic to her left that made Jean Grey look up from where Rachel was scooting happily around the waist-height playhouse. The panic was strong enough to make it through Jean’s shields, but she wasn’t particularly worried yet. It was why she generally chose this park, after all. Sure, sheer terror and internal screams were as common here as anywhere else, but Jean had no responsibility of action for the sticky fingered cherub with a bug in its mouth and a smile on its face. 

Children’s playgrounds were great. It was relaxing, listening to panic and horror all around her and doing absolutely nothing about it.

So Jean wasn’t particularly worried, but she still looked up, because the man it was coming from hadn’t leapt to his feet to wipe off the usual insects, snot, tears, or filth that generally came with these emotions. He had sat straight up, practically vibrating with emotion, and went straight to his cell phone.

_9-1-1_ , he thought, hard, and now the terror was tinged with fury and resignation as well, which was not a usual feeling connected with emergency dispatch. Jean frowned, half rising, and followed the man’s line of sight.

James Barnes was wandering around the bushes, half visible around the greenery, feeling amused and a little tired. He was following…

Well.

Wow.

That was… quite a bit of sheer mortification coming from that teenager. It hadn’t even registered to her before that point, because it was so heavily steeped in social anxiety and ingrained adolescent confusion that Jean had tuned it right out. She wouldn’t have been able to get within three miles of the school if embarrassed teenagers going through emotions was something she noticed anymore.

On the other bench, the man was apparently reporting him for stalking a teenager. Even without telepathy, Jean would have known Barnes knew—he glanced up from what he was doing and looked straight at the man, gave him an ‘are you serious’ look, and rolled his eyes. The boredom and exasperation rolling of of Barnes put the scene into clear context, and Jean sympathized. She’d been recognized in public before, too.

The man with the phone started hissing something about public duty and negligence, anger throbbing out of him in waves, then hung up and redialed. 

Another teenager popped out of the woods, wearing more twigs and leaves in his hair than one usually obtained at ground level, and made some frantic hand gestures at the other boy behind Barnes’ back.

_Not here_ , the teenager was thinking frantically. In front of him, Barnes had a frozen look and a newer, deeper well of exasperation as he tried to pretend he couldn’t read the entire situation off of the other boy’s face almost as well as Jean could have. _I found it, but it’s gone. I’m going that way. Do the thing_. The first kid was snapping his gaze back and forth between Barnes and his friend, looking and feeling increasingly worried.

Then the boy swallowed, grimaced, and said something to Barnes.

Barnes didn’t smile, but the banked amusement shot up to hysterical delight. He leaned in, faux concerned, _are you sure_ , and the boy scrunched his face up tight and about faced. Then, with deep resignation, he headed over to the playground.

The boy covered in foliage disappeared, but Barnes was tracking him—over near the river, it seemed, and up into the tree branches, _that_ was interesting—and then Jean Grey got to watch James Buchanan Barnes, Fist of Hydra, climb onto a seesaw sized for one year olds with what was probably another super, and solemnly lift the kid - radiating a thick fog of awkward teenage angst -into the air.

Beside her, Concerned Neighbor was making a third, increasingly furious phone call to Emergency Services. After that, he tried the local police dispatch, the county sheriff office, and even the dog catcher. He had all of them programmed into the phone already.

Jean settled back, got comfortable on her bench, and relaxed.

***

“I know I said ‘I got it’,” Bucky admitted, phone held to his ear with his shoulder, taking three roasts and a bulk package of steak out of the freezer to thaw. He figured that and all the vegetables and rice in the house might last everybody one, maybe one and a half meals, at least. “And I never thought I would start feeling embarrassed on a Spider’s behalf, but today I watched Peter’s buddy community theatre it through pretending to be interested in a slide that came up to my knees, and I’m actually feeling a little guilty about it for letting him. Are you _sure_ you don’t need any help?”

“No, we got it,” Steve said on the other line. Bucky could hear Tony cursing in the background, followed by explosions. “Apparently we lost an intern and that’s why the machines all said everything was balanced out between the dimensions. Long story short, there’s a lot of math and experimentation to do, but Peter’s new friend isn’t going to get ripped apart into his inherent atoms to fit our dimension like we thought.”

Bucky froze, the roasts balanced on his metal arm. “Wait, what?”

Steve somehow conveyed a shrug over the phone. “I guess if you squeeze through without anything to balance you on the other side, everything tries to reset itself in some pretty painful ways.”

“ _Spiderthing Two had a chance of getting torn into separate molecules?_ ” Bucky demanded, juggling the phone and roasts as he levered the refrigerator door open with his foot. “This was something we were worried about?”

“No, it’s fine, we balanced it all out,” Steve promised, and Bucky stared into the fridge like it would be the responsible adult in this discussion. It wasn’t. “We just have to figure out where the intern went on the other side and swap them back.”

Bucky opened and shut his mouth a few times. “How did Stark just lose an intern? What the hell are they _doing_ at the tower these days??”

“Not vetting interns, apparently,” Steve said. Bucky rolled his eyes and pushed the peanut butter aside to make more room. “I guess the kind of gal that comes in late and wanders past a bunch of caution signs to poke around in the most dangerous labs Stark has is also the type to get distracted by another project and just not show up at all, so people didn’t get worried for a while.”

“So why do they need you?” Bucky slid the roasts onto the bottom level where they wouldn’t drip on anything and shut the door, then poked his head out the window to check on the spiderbabies. They were setting up an elaborately disguised food bowl under a shrub like they thought they were getting away with something. Kids. “Not for math. You would have failed every year of high school if it weren’t for me.”

“Eh,” Steve said, not agreeing, but not fighting a losing battle. Which was good, because his transcripts were all in PDFs online and Bucky knew how to find them. “I’m mostly here as a meat wall for when the tentacles get through.”

Bucky blinked.

“It’s not that often,” Steve promised.

“So in the meantime, you’re giving me babysitting duty,” Bucky said slowly, deciding to let the tentacle thing drop on the basis of really not wanting to know. “Not, like, metaphorical mission-based babysitting duty. Actual babysitting duty.”

“You’re good at it,” Steve assured him. “I didn’t get myself killed all through puberty. If babysitting were an Olympic sport that would get you the silver at least.”

Bucky closed his eyes. 

“Just until we track down the intern,” Steve swore. “And until we get the portal up with enough changes we don’t drop off another Spider-Man or any of the tentacles. And until we have a way to get everything stabilized so we don’t misplace anything else mid-dimension.”

Bucky leaned heavily on the kitchen counter and took some steadying breaths. “If I have to wander around in the bushes with them like a creeper in front of Concerned Patrick and the Pheonix again, I’m going to put caramel sauce in your shampoo. I think Patrick called 911 about three times in a row, hoping to get someone who didn’t know him.”

“Fair,” Steve said, and then Stark was shouting and there was this horrible, eldritch shrieking and Steve had to hang up.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you to Skellerbvvt, Quietnight, Galwednesday, and Silentwalrus for your wonderful feedback!

“Honestly, you’re really lucky you’re here while Captain Rogers is out,” Peter was saying, poking at his phone. “It gets...bad, when he’s here.”

Miles looked up from his own game of Super Mega Avengers Crush Saga (a bizarre amalgam of different arcade apps he had in his own dimension; it hurt his brain every so often when he thought about it too hard), and frowned. “Is this that weird thing where you hint that Sergeant Barnes, best known for giving his life to save the world from Nazis, is actually for reals dangerous? Because it’s super weird when you do that.”

“What?” Peter asked. His phone made a sad tuba noise and he swore and looked back down. “No, I mean they start _bickering_. Last time I was stuck with both of them, they started arguing over whose turn it was to mow the lawn when we got home. Sergeant Barnes was really adamant that even though Captain Rogers did it last time, it should still be his turn because of something Rogers did on a double date in 1941.” Peter shuddered at the memory. “That fight lasted for _three hours_.”

Miles considered that. “Huh,” he said eventually, matching glowing hammers, widow’s bites, and shields while a stylized cartoon Ultron flew around the screen capturing vibranium points. “What did Captain Rogers do on the date?”

“I have literally no idea,” Peter admitted. “There were all these _looks_ and I think Sergeant Barnes was actually pulling in every bad move Rogers had used with anyone ever so it was tough to tell what actually happened on that particular date. Also I was busy trying to will the ground to swallow me whole, so I stopped listening pretty early on.”

Miles frowned as Ultron flashed neon green and did a dance he was pretty sure came from yet another video game. It involved a lot of high kicking. 

“I mean,” Peter continued, making a considering face and shrugging, “he _is_ pretty dangerous.”

“Sure. Dangerous. I totally see it,” Miles said, matching five widow’s bites in a row and giving the cartoon Ultron what looked like a minor concussion. “He complains all the time on the phone to Captain America about us leaving towels on the bathroom floor, and the other night he forced me to eat kale.” Miles did some quick jazz hands between matches. “ _Scary._ ”

Peter looked like he was going to say something back, but that was when Sergeant Barnes started cursing a blue streak outside, came stalking in, and dragged Peter out by his collar to help clean up what turned out to be overturned recycling all over the front lawn. 

Miles, who had intelligently opted to go invisible and hide under the bed, gave Peter a thumbs up in solidarity, which he felt counted as moral support whether Peter could see it or not. 

The scattered recycling, though. They’d been living with bona-fide Nazi-punching war heroes _Captain America and Sergeant James Buchanan Barnes_ for three days and Not Even a Whole Night, and that was all they had found of Churro so far—chew marks and overturned trash cans. Enough to know that she was staying nearby, but not enough to actually get ahold of her and make sure she was safe.

Barnes, predictably, was not pleased with the trash situation. Luckily, they had managed to keep Churro herself a total secret because Peter and Miles were professionals. Sergeant Barnes had no idea Miles had lost Churro somewhere in the Westchester suburbs to knock over supersoldier bins and scatter empty cartons of cold-pressed organic mango juice across the yard and hedges every morning. 

“This is the third fucking morning that stupid dog has gone through the recycling,” Barnes was now complaining on the phone, which was obviously a total coincidence. “Are you almost done over there?”

Captain Rogers apparently said something Barnes didn’t like, because he made a face like he’d eaten half of his own carefully stacked nine-lemon kitchen table centerpiece. 

Yeah. Nine-lemon centerpiece. _Terrifying._ Miles tried to communicate as much to Peter using only his eyes and some really evocative chin pointing, but Peter didn’t seem convinced. He jerked his head to the back patio doors, and Miles tried to nod without moving his head. 

“Can’t he do something that pulls it into the portal without having to find it first?” Barnes demanded, turning to open the front blinds, and then Miles and Peter were out the door and desperately trying to smuggle the dog food and bowl filched from three streets over under a shrub somewhere Barnes wouldn’t see it before they got caught. 

The complicating factor to finding Churro was that keeping their search a secret from Sergeant Barnes made it really hard to actually accomplish anything. It wasn’t that Miles believed Barnes was dangerous to her or something; Miles would have trusted him based on American History class alone, although when he’d said so the other day, Peter had gotten an uncomfortable look on his face. Sergeant Barnes had apparently heard him through the kitchen window, too, because Miles and Peter had needed to stash the dog food under the patio real quick when he’d come out and made Miles promise to run away and call the biggest superhero he trusted if he saw Bucky Barnes in his own dimension.

Which was weird. But okay. It was just that adults tended to have different priorities than Miles did, and he wasn’t entirely sure, with all the science going on, that Churro would be taken care of in a way he approved of. 

“No. _No,_ ” Barnes was saying when they snuck back in. He raised his eyebrows at them—definitely caught. Luckily whatever Captain Rogers said next brought his attention back to his conversation pretty quick. “Steve! Please don’t put him on the— Hi. Stark.”

Peter and Miles exchanged a glance that was more like a wince. 

“Why yes,” Barnes said, chipper and cheerful and literally wringing a dishtowel into shreds with his metal hand. “I _do_ remember how you’ve been so kind and forgiving. I’m sure it had nothing to do with Steve at _all_ how you forgave me for being a tortured, brainwashed automaton, especially seeing as how it was your dad’s organization and tech that ended up making it possible. It was really kind of you.” 

Miles looked over at Peter again, and his eyes were probably the size of golf balls, but Peter only shrugged like it was old news.

“Yeah,” Barnes interrupted the voice on the other line suddenly. “No. I’m not bringing the kid in until you’re done. You’re not going to do tests on a preteen without a guardian present, even if the guardian is in another dimension,” and Miles had a sudden, visceral image of a different Peter strapped to a chair with Doc Oc and nearly went invisible right there. Barnes’ eyes were on him, for a moment, then he was back to disemboweling the dishtowel again. 

The voice got insistent. 

“Because he’s _scared,_ that’s why,” Barnes snapped, listened for a moment to something that sounded really sarcastic, then clearly made a decision not to deal with it anymore and hung up. 

His phone rang almost immediately. 

“I told him _no,_ Steve. I’m not bringing the kid in for testing,” Barnes said as soon as he answered, and hung up again. 

Miles glanced meaningfully at Peter, vindicated, and Peter rolled his eyes and shrugged. “Yeah,” Peter conceded in a whisper. “Okay. He probably has our best interests at heart as long as I don’t total his car again.”

“ _Please_ don’t,” Barnes said, shoving the phone in his pocket and whipping the dishrag into the trash. “Fuck. I’m going to put out the new dog proof bins and then go make stress waffles. Try not to strain your eyeballs making faces at each other while I’m doing it.”

So the long and the short of Miles’ impromptu alternate dimension supersoldier vacation was that hiding the search for Churro was going great, and having an adult with life skills like cooking in their corner was sure a nice change from Miles’ last crisis, but actually figuring out where Churro was camped out in the superhero-saturated community of Westchester wasn’t going so hot. 

Also apparently in this dimension Sergeant Barnes had a lot of torture (?) and brainwashing (??) in his past but still wore actual yellow polka dot aprons to make breakfast and made passive aggressive remarks about the state of his neighbors’ lawns, which was all a giant pile of ‘what’ in Miles’ head that he chose to just ignore. 

“So like, on a scale of 1 to 10. How good are you at sneaking out of a house without anyone noticing,” Miles asked Peter as soon as he got back from reorganizing soda bottles with Barnes in his new bins. Miles was not optimistic that they would work. Churro was pretty smart. 

Peter squinted at Miles.

“We can’t keep trying not to find Churro since Sergeant Barnes is usually two feet behind us,” Miles explained, looking carefully out the window and yanking the curtain shut when Barnes turned and raised an eyebrow. The guy did that a _lot_. “We’re just going to keep successfully not finding her. We need to ditch Sergeant Barnes.”

Peter nodded. “Well,” he said, thoughtfully. “On a normal person scale I’m a solid seven, but with Captain Rogers and Sergeant Barnes... I’m more like a two.” He paused. “Maybe a one point five? I’m up for it, though. But, like. After he makes us breakfast, right? He makes really good waffles.”

“Right,” Miles agreed, because that should have gone without saying. “Obviously. After he makes us breakfast.”

***

Logan was riding herd on a pack of bored, hungry, not-so-secretly texting teenagers with mutant powers and immortality complexes in the woods behind the manor when _two fucking more_ scurried down a tree and added themselves to his lesson on Not Dying Like a Goddamned Idiot In The Wilderness Like A City Bred Asshole.

Logan frowned and did a quick headcount, just in case someone had run off and snuck back in. Nope. Definitely two extras. Anyway, only one of his climbers had shape-shifting abilities, and he didn’t recognize either of the new ones. 

So that could be… dangerous.

Luckily, all the kids who were _supposed_ to be there were smart enough to know a sudden addition in a group of mutants was probably bad news, but they were also trained enough to know you don’t let on you’ve realized, thank goodness. Logan moved to catch a more direct breeze and sniffed. 

The kids _reeked_ of Barnes’ place. They must have been sleeping over and doing laundry there to smell that much of it, and while they were looking shifty and nervous, it was regular ‘I’m doing something my trusted adult won’t like’ nervous, not ‘Captain America and the Winter Soldier are dead and I’m hiding from Hydra’ nervous. 

Logan shrugged and pulled up a dandelion by its roots to wave it at the group and wipe off some of the dirt. His kids, seeing him relax, relaxed too; enough to give the newcomers some weird looks and go back to texting like Logan couldn’t see them. Barnes’ kids both shuffled their feet and looked at each other. One gave the other a fairly annoyed look, then got an elbow in his ribs in return, and then they started shoving and whispering at each other in a move Logan wasn’t going to take from his own set of annoyances, much less a pair of Barnes’ castaways. 

“Hey! Back of the group!” Logan said sharply, and the two froze, wide-eyed and ready to run. “Turn it down. I’m trying to keep the two kids in this class who sometimes pay attention from starving to death the next time they’re stranded in the wilderness. Maybe have a little consideration for their survival.”

“What about the rest of us, Professor?” Terrence, who was not one of those kids, piped up.

Logan pulled out his phone and glanced up at him, then back down. “Well,” he said, voice heavy with regret, “when you’re dying of thirst four yards from running snowmelt, I hope it’s a comfort that you got that final message off to Saud.”

“ _You’re_ texting _right now_ ,” Saud protested.

“Yes I am,” Logan agreed, typing _Found your kids_ and pressing send. “Alright. So what else can you eat here?”

“...grass?”

“No.” Logan’s phone buzzed, and he pulled it back out.

_Yeah, I know._ Barnes had sent back. _They’re sitting still and not breaking anything so I’m letting them think they’re clever._

_No the fuck you are not_ , Logan typed back, glowering. _I got enough of these assholes already._

_Come on, they’re both really fast,_ Bucky begged. Logan glowered at the phone some more. _I’ve been following them around the woods all day. You should see my *hair*. Gimme a break._

“Can I eat those leaves?” Terrance asked, pointing. 

“Sure,” Logan told him, making a sweeping motion without looking away from the phone. _Get your fucking kids._ “They’re poison ivy, like I just explained five minutes ago, but give it a try. See what happens when you eat something called _poison ivy_. You,” he said, pointing. “Barnes’ kids.” 

Both of them stared like headlight-stunned wildlife again. 

“He ever teach you what you can eat out here?”

“Uh,” said one.

“Not poison ivy?” tried the other. 

“Wait,” said the first one, eyes going wide again. “Wait, did _Sergeant Barnes_ ever--”

“How did you _know--_ ,” stuttered the other.

“ _We’re not looking for anything!_ ” yelped the short one, and then they both turned abruptly, shot some kind of gross shit out of their sleeves and started swinging through the trees with it like Mutant Tarzan and his smaller clone.

A moment later, Bucky Barnes was booking it through the underbrush after them. He made sure to shoulder-check Logan as he passed, but having an adamantium reinforced skeleton did wonders for one’s personal balance and inertia. Logan barely rocked.

“Asshole,” Logan muttered, rubbing his arm. He kept forgetting Barnes had metal in his bones, too, so it really hurt to hold his ground.

“The wilderness sure does have a lot of people in it,” Destiny pointed out. “I feel like maybe someone will find me before it comes to poison ivy eating.”

“We’re in _Westchester_ ,” Logan said.

“Wait, was that _the Winter Soldier,_ ” Maria asked, and that was the last part of the trip where anyone listened to a word Logan said.

***

“Hey, Buck,” Steve said when he picked up.

“Tell him to stop calling,” Bucky could hear Tony yell distantly. “If he’s not taking my calls we’re not taking his.” Steve put something over the receiver to muffle whatever he said back, and then Stark 2.0 made some sort of exasperated comment before the eldritch shrieking started up again. At one point, whatever was covering the mic came off and Bucky heard some wet, meaty thuds, someone screaming, and Steve’s second loudest ‘I’m going to fuck you up’ bellow.

The phone clattered to the floor. “ _No,_ Tony,” Steve was saying in the background, and the screaming took on a new decibel. “We aren’t opening the portal for any tests while I’m on the phone. We decided!”

Whatever Tony said back wasn’t audible.

“Fine, then, _I_ decided,” Steve grunted, and there were several suction pops and a gush of something that sounded viscous. “And _I_ have decided I am going to take five minutes to talk to my _husband_ , and then _after_ we can play tag with interdimensional horrors!”

There was a mechanical whirring sound, more screams, and then Steve picked up the phone. “Hey Buck,” he said again, sounding only a little out of breath. “What’s up?”

Bucky hesitated. “Well,” he admitted, “I had a whole rant ready about chasing the kids around Westchester after their lost dog while I pretend I don’t know about it, but I’ve decided you sound like you’re having a harder day than I am.”

“No, no, I want to hear it,” Steve assured him. There was a shuffling noise and Steve let out the ‘huff’ he made when he was sitting down after a fight. Tony said something from behind whatever blast shield he was probably using, and there was a meaty thunk that was likely Steve throwing something at it. Bucky was guessing probably something Steve had cut off of the tentacle monster. “What was the rant? I bet it was good.”

“I am sitting here in an abandoned Westchester swamp, Steve,” Bucky recited dutifully, “watching the spiders shake biscuits at the greenery and use baby voices while I get eaten alive by mutated super mosquitoes.” He scratched his chin and hunkered back against the tree he was tucked in, trying to keep his muddy boots from touching any of his clothes. “It seemed a lot worse before I called you.”

“That’s a good touch with the mosquitoes, though,” Steve assured him. “I like it. It’s evocative.”

“These mosquitoes have been battle hardened, Steve,” Bucky continued, trying to knock the filth off his boots without being loud enough for the spiders to hear. “They have cut their teeth on trysting adolescent Xmen. They are _supervillain mosquitoes, Steve_.”

“This is a great rant,” Steve promised. “I’m feeling very sympathetic.”

“You should be,” Bucky told him. Up ahead, the spiderbabies were cooing at a clump of vines that was clearly 100% dog free. “Have you guys found the intern yet? The kids crashed one of Logan’s survival classes trying to hide from me and I am never going to hear the end of it.” Miles was patting the ground around him and saying ‘goooooooood boy’ on repeat. Bucky rolled his eyes and gave up on the boots. 

“Nah. We found the dog we lost, though! Our dog, I mean, the one from our dimension. So once we find theirs over here we’re ready to swap. Ours was a stray that got too close to the window, I guess.” 

“Too close to the— okay,” Bucky said, exasperated. “Stark needs to work on his OSHA compliance, Steve, really.”

“You’re not getting any argument from me. I’m pretty sure there has to be _something_ about giant squids in those and I’m planning to file a complaint,” Steve said. Ahead, Miles had thoroughly investigated the shrub, discovered there was no dog, and the two picked another direction seemingly at random. “Do they really still think you don’t know what they’re looking for? They haven’t exactly been subtle.”

“They’ve been trying to lose me all day so they can find it, so I’m guessing yes.” Bucky sidled along the branch he was on, jumped carefully to another tree, and settled in to watch the show again. “I guess they think I’m going to hand it over to Stark for experiments? Or maybe cook it for dinner. Kids. Who knows.”

“I feel kind of bad taking our dog back, honestly. Some nice family apparently adopted it on the other side.” The mechanical whirring started up on Steve’s side of things, and he made a warning noise at someone. “How do you feel about maybe taking it in?”

Bucky wrinkled his nose. “Like I would be spending a lot of time vacuuming fur out of my arm when I could be sucking your dick instead.”

“Great!” Steve said, and the shrieking started back up. “Damnit, Tony! Sorry, I gotta go. But I’ll be back tonight!” There was a sodden slapping noise, and Steve wheezed like he’d taken a direct hit. “We’re almost done with the actual work,” he managed. “It’s going to be a while until the computer runs it all, but we’re almost done with everything we need to feed into it. I should be back in time for dinner.”

“We’re talking about this dog thing, Rogers,” Bucky warned him. Steve recovered his breath and made an inquiring noise like he was very concerned with what Bucky had to say, and Bucky didn’t buy it for a second. “You’re not just bringing it home and saying ‘oh, but we discussed it already, I named it Dum Dum’.”

“I’m absolutely going to name it Dum Dum,” Steve said, and hung up.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I want you wonderful, WONDERFUL commenters to know that I am reading EVERY SINGLE ONE. I'm hiding from replying because it's so overwhelming, but GETTING them isn't overwhelming at all-- it's seriously kept me writing through some PRETTY CRAZY TIMES and thank you SO MUCH. It means a LOT. I'm so sorry I've been out of communication and silent.
> 
> Chapter 3 is almost done, and I have chunks of the final chapter 4 written along with one of the epilogues (you get TWO epilogues!), so don't worry about me tailing off. I'm just posting slower than I used to.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> WHY CAN'T I WRITE SHORT THINGS. Apologies for the ever-increasing number of chapters. Chapter 4 is almost complete and has been through a few rounds of beta-ing already, so that should be out by the end of the week I'm guessing, and I have about 2k words of 5 written and of course, the finished epilogue. 
> 
> Thank you to Silentwalrus for betaing here, and thank you Quietnight for betaing and then betaing and then betaing, and then when I ripped out all the work you had done to put it in chapter 4 betaing AGAIN. I have the best friends.

Dinner was weird, even considering Miles was in an alternate dimension.

Captain America had come home for dinner, and Sergeant Barnes had made _pot roast_ , and they’d all sat down at the table and eaten it with the radio on in the background. Captain Rogers asked about their day, and Sergeant Barnes brought out dessert, and when Miles had made a face at Peter about it, Peter had whispered back, “James Barnes: Super Homemaker is _even weirder_ in this dimension,” without any real explanation, so Miles gave up and rolled with it when Barnes made them wash the dishes afterwards. By hand, with a rag. Like _cavemen_. 

After that Captain America and Sergeant Barnes had made a lot of really significant looks at each other, hinted that Miles and Peter should really call it an early night since they’d been running around the woods picking up burrs and grass stains and holes in their jeans all day, and locked themselves in the master bedroom.

“Do you think Churro only comes out at night?” Peter asked from the other bed once they’d finished brushing their teeth. “Is that why we can’t find her?”

“I don’t know. I guess she might have only come out when I was there before, but now everything is weird.” The whole world just figured. Miles had been really getting the whole superheroing thing down in his own dimension, and now here he was in backwards land where Peter Parker was in high school and always ‘considering options’ and ‘conferring with adults’ and ‘thinking about ramifications’ and everything instead of throwing Miles off buildings. It made sense that Churro, not being a superhero, would be off her game. He kicked his feet on the wall above his headboard absently, thinking about it. “She might not know to come out in the day for me, now.” 

Peter rolled over. “It’s so cool you kept her at the park. I should have thought of that. Aunt May is always telling me we can’t have any pets in our apartment and I just accepted it like a doof. The _park_.”

“Yeah,” Miles said, spirits lifting. It _was_ really smart. “No way my parents would ever let me keep her, but they don’t even know. And that way there’s tons of hot dogs just lying around for her to eat, too.”

“At least she’s used to sleeping outside, so this isn’t weird for her or anything.” Peter was quiet. Then, “Hey,” he said after a minute, which was a whole new record for him before ‘considering the consequences’ again. “What about the winter, though? Where do you keep her in the winter?”

Miles drummed his heels on the wall. 

“You know,” he said, staring at the ceiling. “I haven’t had her that long yet.”

“Huh,” Peter said, and now they were both staring at the ceiling, and it was totally the last thing Miles needed right now. Second-guessing everything was Miles of the past. Miles the Spiderman was a doer. A man of action. A _leader_. He didn’t need to obsess over everything all the time like a brickhead.

“It will be okay, right?” Miles offered hopefully, trying to project confidence and positive thinking directly into Peter’s brain. “Like. What do wolves and bears and stuff do in the winter? Animals don’t always live in houses. She’ll be okay.”

Peter made a noise that could have been agreement, but also could have not been. Which, thanks, Peter. That was enough of that. “We should go now,” Miles said, rolling upright and pulling on his shoes. “They’re definitely asleep by now. They’ve been in there for a while, and they’re _really_ old.”

“Yeah.” Peter still sounded thoughtful, but at least he was pulling on a sweatshirt and searching for his sneakers. “What are we going to do with her when we find Churro, though? What do we do with her if we’re not telling Sergeant Barnes?”

Miles frowned, then set his jaw and dismissed it. “We’ll figure it out when it comes to it, otherwise we’ll just sit here worrying. You could keep her at your Aunt’s place?” he ventured, easing the bedroom door open. “Just until we all get back to my dimension.”

“I think Aunt May would probably notice,” Peter said. They stealthed their way through the house, smooth AF because Miles had this shit _down_ , he was _fine_ , and he could _break out of one stupid house_. They slid the patio door open, slipped on out, and had skimmed halfway across the conveniently neat lawn when the porch light flipped on in a blaze of energy efficient LED. 

They froze. 

Sergeant James Buchanan Barnes was looming barefoot on the back deck, in sagging sweatpants and a worn VA T-shirt ripped at the collar to expose his metal shoulder. His hair looked like German scientists had been raising wyverns in it. 

“Kids,” Sergeant Barnes said, in a growl that conveyed every single year he’d lived since 1942. “You are trying to sneak out of a house designed and outfitted by Captain America and the Winter Soldier. Go back to bed.”

“Who’s the Winter Soldier?” Miles asked. It was a pretty sick codename. 

“Who designed the popcorn ceiling?” Peter asked, and immediately bit his lip. 

“ _Go back to bed_ ,” Barnes said with feeling, and closed the patio doors. 

***

Peter was _reasonably_ sure he and Miles had disarmed the alarms on the windows this time. He was _mostly_ sure they had done it in a way that didn’t trigger anything else when the security went dead, too. He was… _kind_ of sure there were no other technologies between him and the flowerbed. That lawn was too even for pressure sensors. 

He was _absolutely_ sure Miles was going to get him killed, dismembered and hidden in Sergeant Barnes’ organic leaf mulch.

Miles, thank god, seemed to be thinking the same thing, even if he was way too nonchalant about it. “How many times can we wake up Sergeant Barnes and make him come outside to drag us back inside by our ears before he nails them to the wall?” Miles asked like this was a joke and not _a thing that could actually happen._ “Twice more?”

“I think this might be it. Also, dude, nailing ears? I thought you had the nice dimension,” Peter said, and was halfway through the window and noticing the tiny camera he’d missed in the shrubbery next to his head, _leaf mulch here I come_ , when someone rang the doorbell. 

Which was weird.

Also probably bad.

“Oh thank _fuck_ she’s here,” Peter heard from the other end of the house. “They’re halfway out the bathroom window this time. Five minutes more of this and Ross would have been dragging me back off to submarine prison for attempted arachnicide.”

There was a pause before Captain Rogers answered, then, “Who did you call at midnight for this?” He sounded out of breath, which was also weird. Peter didn’t think the guy had gotten more than an average of three hours a night all week, and Peter had assumed he would be sleeping, not exercising or whatever.

One set of footsteps went for the front door, and another, much more concerning set headed their way. 

Miles pulled on Peter’s sleeve. “Hey,” he whispered. “Maybe you should quit staring and _move,_ dude.”

Peter squirmed. 

He wiggled. 

Oh no. 

“I’m stuck,” he whispered back, kicking a little. 

“Are you _kidding_ ,” Miles hissed. 

“I can _not_ break their window!” Peter swung his torso back and forth a little wildly, hoping to work his way free. “Aunt May said if I break one more thing in this house she’s selling all my Lego to pay for it!”

“Here, just,” Miles grabbed his feet and tugged. 

The sill under his ribs groaned in warning and Peter yelped “Wait wait wait _wait_ ,” as something expensive-sounding went _pop_. “Oh no. Oh no.”

“How many Legos can a bathroom window cost?” Miles said consolingly, arms still wrapped around Peter’s knees, and then the door banged open and Miles yelled, jumped, and yanked Peter backwards. Peter smashed through the sill, the wall, the tile, and the shower curtain, then cracked the tub when he fell into it.

Captain America, wearing nothing but plaid sleep shorts, a sheen of perspiration, and a pained look, stared down at them. 

“Hi,” Peter said.

“It was like this when we got here,” Miles swore, eyes wide. “Promise.”

“Sure,” Captain Rogers ran a hand through his rather sweaty cowlicks. “Fine. Great.”

“Okay so like, is anybody going to answer this door ever? You said you had an emergency?” a female voice said from the front of the house. “A…” there was some shuffling and digitized button noises, and when the voice started again it sounded like she was reading something verbatim. “A ‘Super Important Avengers Bona Fide Emergency,’ which was weirdly not on the bona fide Avengers emergency line, for some reason.”

“Oh my god, is that Hawkeye?” Peter asked Captain Rogers. His stomach was doing that rock filled balloon thing, with added butterflies. 

“Yep,” Rogers said, giving Peter a hand up and out of the bathtub in a way that was, honestly, a little more cheerful than Peter would expect for someone whose guest bathroom had just been demolished. Still pained, but not, like. Counting his currently sprouting grey hairs. “I’m glad to see you’re still worried about looking dumb in front of a cute girl. Hopefully that will keep you from breaking anything else tonight.” 

“Gleep,” Peter managed. 

“On the other hand, shame has never worked on me, and God knows I’ve had enough of it, so I guess I shouldn’t get my hopes up,” Rogers admitted. “Come on. Let’s go.”

“Yes,” Sergeant Barnes was answering Hawkeye, deep emotion in his voice, as Peter stumbled forward. “ _Please_. Thank you. Take them anywhere. Just. Wander around the block and let them poke through bushes or whatever. Wherever they want, I don’t care.” Rogers hurried Peter and Miles into the front hall just as Barnes slapped something into Hawkeye’s palm. “Just don’t let them set anything on fire, and don’t bring them back for at least half an hour.”

“I can do an hour and a half,” Hawkeye offered, resettling the neon purple striped bow case on her shoulder. Miles was eyeing it with great admiration. “It’s gonna be triple, though. You’re lucky I was available in the first place, my monthly acid peel got pushed back because of the giant chinchillas this afternoon and no way I’m going out in public after that.” She stopped and considered. “I mean, not that there’s much that _needs_ peeling, obviously. You can’t improve this. But I gotta think about the future.”

“Yes,” Barnes immediately agreed, even as Captain Rogers mouthed the word _triple?_ in the background while Peter and Miles mouthed _acid peel?_ and _chinchillas?_ respectively. Barnes ferried them over towards Hawkeye like a very pushy sheepdog with a metal arm. “Absolutely. One hundred percent.”

Hawkeye rolled her eyes. “ _Three_ hundred percent, that’s what I’m saying,” she told him, and then turned around and walked away. 

“Go,” Barnes ordered them, shuffling everybody out the door. “Leave. We love you and we love having you but _we need some alone time_.”

“Gross,” Hawkeye said, and the door slammed shut, almost catching Peter on the butt. Hawkeye snapped her gum and examined her lilac nails while she apparently waited for Peter and Miles to do something. 

Miles and Peter looked at each other. Then back at Hawkeye. 

“So,” she said, after the silence had a chance to get nice and awkward, “where do you guys want to go?” She snapped her gum again. “Suggestions? Any ideas at all?”

Something heavy slammed against the door from the inside. There was a muffled groaning, and then Barnes shouted, “Fuck _off!_ ” He sounded a little breathless, even through the door. 

“This way!” Miles yelped, and took off at a stiff-legged speedwalk down the road to the right. Peter jumped and followed, and Hawkeye took up the rear. 

***

“Thank you for the fries,” Peter said, carrying the entire burden of making polite conversation, while Miles stared mournfully out the window of Happy Jack’s Late Night Eats like. Well. Like he had lost his dog and it was running around unprotected in an alternate dimension full of unknown dangers and supervillains. 

Peter guessed that was fair enough. Still. It was a waste of good fries.

“No problem.” Hawkeye reached over and took about half of them, because _superheroes didn’t waste fries_.

“You’re going to charge Sergeant Barnes for these when we get back, aren’t you,” Peter realized after another moment, because cash was another pretty predictable superhero priority, right after carbs. 

“Yes, I am.” Hawkeye stuffed five in her mouth at once without dropping a single crumb on her incredibly fluffy and very expensive looking violet sweater. “Hey, other spiderkid,” she said around the mouthful. “Quit looking like somebody hacked your Insta and eat your fries. Barnes is paying good money for those, and my time is up in about fifteen minutes.”

Miles sighed and looked at them, then hesitantly put one single fry in his mouth and chewed like it was dust in his mouth. Peter looked at his own Hawkeye-decimated fries and reached over to steal a few of Miles’.

Because he was a _superhero_.

“Don’t you have more important stuff to do than babysit?” Peter asked, deliberately planting both elbows on the table now that there wasn’t a supersoldier in sight to chastise him for it. “Like, I dunno. Mutated walruses?”

“Pretty sure Barnes has important things too,” she said, smirking the truly irritating smirk of someone who wanted you to know they were an adult and you weren’t. Which was ridiculous, since Peter knew that a) she was eighteen, nineteen tops, and b) Barnes’ more important things all involved oven cleaner and bedelias. “Anyway, look. You and I both know Superheroing doesn’t pay a lot. I got five bucks last week for climbing a tree after this guy’s pet iguana, but it’s not like people start waving their wallets around at you when you stop a raging mutated gorilla with their car. I could take one of the hits people keep offering me, but Captain Rogers looks super disappointed whenever I mention it, so I’m holding off until I’m really desperate.”

“Huh,” Peter said. 

“Are you going to eat your fries?” she asked, and took the rest without waiting for his answer. 

***

When they got back, Sergeant Barnes opened the door looking both more and less disheveled than earlier. He’d lost his shirt at some point except for a lone sleeve dangling from where it was pinched between two metal plates, and he had gained a line of faded marks down his neck and bruises at his waist, but his hair looked a little better despite the three big cylinders rolled up on his head. 

“Are those… curlers?” Miles asked after a long pause, because he had no sense of self preservation _at all._

Hawkeye snorted. “Venmo me!” she called, turning to trot down the steps and away, as Sergeant Barnes gave them the biggest disappointed look Peter had seen outside of detention. 

“Why does everyone think this hair just happens _by itself?_ ” Barnes asked him, waving _sure, yeah, whatever_ at Hawkeye and holding the door wide for them to come in. “Of course they’re curlers. Do people in your dimension just wrap plastic soda cans in their hair to upcycle them?”

“Wait. Are those _hickeys?_ ” Peter demanded, realization dawning and leaving him outraged. “We were in that house!”

“How do you think you were _conceived_ ,” Barnes tossed back, but his metal hand slapped over the hickeys to hide them. “And no, in fact, you were not. Why else would I pay Hawkeye three hundred bucks just to take you for a walk?”

Miles’ eyes got wide. “Whoa, is that the going rate in this dimension?” 

“You paid _Hawkeye_? _Three hundred dollars._ To _babysit us?_ ” Peter demanded, refusing to be sidetracked. 

“Well, sure. I’m the only superpowered chump in New York dumb enough to do it for free,” Barnes said, sauntering up the hallway while re-pinning one of the rollers. “So. Did you find your dog yet?”

Peter was speechless. He gaped, swallowed. “The—what. _How—?_ ”

Barnes blinked, taken aback himself for a moment, then looked at Miles. Miles looked like a stunned baby deer stuck in a tree in a traffic median. 

“Really?” Barnes said. “Really? Did you guys think you were actually being sneaky? Did you think I wouldn’t notice you cooing into the bushes 24/7 and hiding dog food on my own property? What did you figure I thought was happening?”

“How would I know, this dimension is ridiculous!” Miles shouted, throwing up his hands. “You have a bunch of plastic rollers in your hair like someone’s grandma and you just paid an olympic archer three hundred dollars to babysit two teenagers! How would I know what’s normal?”

Peter gaped for a moment at this amazing display of logic. He glanced up at Barnes. “I mean, he has a point?”

“ _Did you find the dog,_ ” Sergeant Barnes asked again, his voice doing that thing it did that always made Peter think of the Jeopardy timer ticking down.

Miles made a _time to lie to the grownup for the greater good!_ face at Peter, but Peter was _not_ from another dimension and had learned through bitter and terrible experience that Sergeant Barnes was immune to all such efforts. There was no choice but to come clean. 

“No.”

Barnes just made a thoughtful noise. “Is it really your dog?” he asked Miles, like the totally reasonable human being he was very much not.

“...yeah,” Miles admitted, looking at the ground. “She’s mine.”

Barnes gave them a long look, then apparently _took pity on them_. Maybe Peter had switched dimensions at some point during the night after all. The existence of a diner named Happy Jacks suddenly seemed pretty questionable. “Just put your shirt out next to a bowl of water, kid,” he said, chucking Miles on the shoulder in a way that almost tipped him right over. Peter caught him by the arm, boggling. “You’ve spread an even layer three items deep all over my guest room, it shouldn’t be hard to find something that smells like you. Could be it’ll come back when it knows for sure where you are.”

Miles perked up. “You think so?” He asked, rocking from foot to foot in a way Peter found creepily familiar. “Will it be that easy?”

“Eh. Maybe,” Barnes said, and turned to Peter and _ruffled his hair._ He was in a seriously good mood for a guy who had just blown 300 dollars. “If it is, you gotta let May know it was my idea. I need a win with her after the moth monster during your spring break.”

“You’re already married,” Peter protested, slapping his hands away. “Quit trying to commit bigamy with my Aunt May.”

“If I’m stuck being yet another one of your super father figures,” Barnes told him, undeterred. “I should at least get to flirt with the lady who threatened me with a tire iron over your welfare. Here, I’ll get you a bowl, you two get something of Miles’.”

“I hope she threatens you with something a lot bigger next time,” Peter muttered, dragging Miles off to the guest room. 

“Wait, why would your aunt threaten Sergeant Barnes with a tire iron?” Miles asked incredulously. “This dimension makes _no sense_.” 

Peter pushed Miles towards the dirty laundry, tripped over what might once have been a pair of jeans, and landed them both face first in the most nuclear heap. The ensuing stinky shirt battle drove explanations right out of his head. 

***

Late that night, Bucky felt Steve weigh down the side of the bed again. He’d left around two am after another call from Stark, so thank goodness tonight’s disaster seemed to be a quick fix. Bucky made a tired, welcoming noise and shifted to make room, and Steve must have been exhausted; he shuffled closer, but he was damn uncoordinated about it. Bucky yawned, stretched, and rolled over to throw his arm around—

Something covered in _scales_ —

“Jesus motherfucking CHRIST!” Bucky shrieked, scrambling backwards and diving off the bed for the rifle underneath. The thing in his bed leapt up and reared back with an earsplitting reptilian screech, displaying a mouthful of glistening teeth. Bucky spun sideways as it sprang towards him, brought up the rifle, and nearly _took off goddamn spiderbaby 2’s face when he swung in front of Bucky shouting,_ “nonononoWAIT.”

“Stop helping and get the hell out of the _way_ ,” Bucky yelled, grabbing the kid to sling him around behind him, because there was a _motherfucking dinosaur_ crouched in his bed, and then everything was a frantic, horrible scramble filled with hysterical shouting spiderchildren pinging off the walls and a prehistoric monster tearing apart the bed and flinging feathers and stuffing into the air. 

“Stop!” Peter was wailing, leaping for the thing. Bucky only just got a metal arm around Peter in time and chucked him back out the door, but the suicidal idiot came boomeranging back in and went for it again. “No, wait, Sergeant Barnes, wait!”

“You are going to get yourselves _killed,_ ” Bucky shouted, maybe getting a little hysterical himself. Both kids were moving too fast for Bucky to risk shooting anything, but so far no one had been eviscerated even though the boys were sure trying. “Get out of here!”

“It’s just Churro! _It’s just Churro!_ ” Miles caught a lucky swing while Bucky’s arms were full of the other suicidal superpowered adolescent and about half a pint of webbing. Spiderman Junior, The Even Smaller One, went careening into the _Jesus Christ actual velociraptor_ and the momentum of it sent them both smashing through the window with a shower of shattered glass and broken framing. Bucky and Peter tumbled through right after, Bucky’s heart in his mouth, but thank the fucking lord above, Miles hadn’t been sliced apart any more than a few cuts from the glass. Bucky came up from the roll he’d tucked into, rifle leveled, and both boys rushed to stand in front of the creature with their arms spread protectively.

“Move,” Bucky hissed, trying to sight the thing. “You guys. _Move_.”

“It’s just a dog,” Miles begged, and Bucky scanned his face for signs of head injury before going back to the actual goddamned velociraptor clawing the motherfucking shit out of his beautiful zoysia sod. Miles was breathless and near tears. “It’s not her fault. She’s just a dog. She’s not dangerous, I promise, _I promise, she’s just a dog_.”

Bucky quickly ran through his standard _am I being mind controlled and/or hallucinating_ checklist. Nope. Nothing pinged. He narrowed his eyes. 

The dinosaur poked its alarming snout over Miles’ shoulder and cocked its head. There was a shuddering thump-thump noise behind the kids, and after a moment Bucky realized it was the thing’s actual tail hitting the Japanese maple they’d half-crushed on their way out of the house.

It was _wagging_ it.

“What,” Bucky managed after a full thirty seconds of undignified gaping, “the hell kind of fucked up dogs you got in your dimension, kid?”


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you so much Quietnight, Galwednesday and Silentwalrus for looking this over and fixing everything I screwed up lol.

Steve Rogers was dead to the world—desperately making up the massive sleep debt the week had left him with on an overturned bench he had to share with three robots—when Bucky’s ringtone jolted him upright. He was swiping to answer before he’d even fully woken up.

“It’s like Barnes programmed Pavlov’s bell into your phone,” Tony groused from his perch atop a construction of gleaming steel plates and wires. Equal odds on whether it was a nearly-finished dimensional portal generator or a space-age vending machine. “I tried to wake you up to hand me that engine three times and nothing, but your housewife calls and you perk up faster than your own di—”

“Hey Bucky,” Steve said, tuning Tony out. “It’s good to hear from you. How are things?” He glanced back at Tony, who was still muttering to himself, and mouthed _no damn space squid this time_. Tony shrugged, which wasn’t an answer.

“Okay,” Bucky said, sounding a little harried. Steve could sympathize. You could punch disembodied tentacles all you wanted when they started getting on your nerves, but with teenagers you had to set limits and have concerned discussions, so Bucky had definitely gotten the short end of the stick on this adventure. The _very_ short end, Steve guessed, since judging from the strain in Bucky’s voice he had been having a lot of concerned discussions recently. “Okay. So, babe.”

“It’s alright,” Steve assured him immediately, just in case. “We can buy another one. Money doesn’t mean anything anymore since we’re rich.”

Tony made a disagreeing noise from up on the dimension vending machine.

“What? Another— _please_ don’t,” Bucky said. “And I’ll remind you that you said that next time you tell me you can fix the plumbing yourself because it’s just putting pipes together, why pay someone like a chump. No, they didn’t break anything. I’m calling about the dog.”

Steve brightened immediately and assumed his best puppy eyes, since it helped him keep up the right tone of voice if his face matched. “What about it?”

“What kind of… superhero situation do they have in the other dimension?” Bucky asked carefully. Steve could hear a shuffle on the other side of the phone and heard one of Peter’s anguished noises, but in stereo, which meant both spiders were probably staring at Bucky with the same face Steve was. Uh oh. “And. What kind of communication do we have going with them?”

“...ssssiiiiimilar?” Steve managed, dropping the puppy eyes in favor of the forehead wrinkle of dawning worry, now. “But no real communication?”

“So we couldn’t...discuss this dog thing. With anyone on the other side, there.”

“Don’t tell him!” Steve heard one of the spiders say. “You promised not to tell him!”

There was a scuffing sound and the voices on Bucky’s end got a lot quieter, but what Steve could hear sounded a lot like the principal’s office did whenever Steve visited local schools. After a few moments of pleading voices and stern ultimatums, Bucky stopped covering the phone.

“...and anyway he can _hear you_ , so if you want to keep your secrets you better not blurt them all over the phone at him,” Bucky said distantly, then more clearly, “so we have a problem with the dog.”

“Sounds like it,” Steve agreed cautiously. 

Bucky sighed. “Is it possible to switch the teenagers back and keep the dogs where they are?” he asked. There was an outraged noise from Miles, which then cut off sharply like Bucky had turned his best Barnes Family Glare on it. 

“Uh,” Steve said. “I have no idea. Hold on.” He turned back to the portal automat. “Tony?”

“Oh, _now_ you want my input,” Tony griped, lifting up his welding mask and leaning over the frayed loops of some half-finished circuitry. “ _Now_ you want me to—”

“Can we leave the dogs where they are and just send the kids back?” Steve interrupted, while on the other line, the spiders started up another round of protests. 

“What?” Tony frowned. “Sure. I mean, we sent everything else back when we started this thing up the first time and left them here. Hell, we—wait.” Tony squinted at him for a second, and then his face lit up and he almost split his own face in half with his delighted grin. “Are you _stealing this kid’s dog?_ ”

“Possibly?” Steve said.

“ _No_ ,” came Miles’ voice from the phone, where he’d apparently grabbed it from Bucky in the scramble.

“Yes,” Bucky said in the background. “Steve, we gotta go.”

“Okay,” Steve said, nonplussed, and there were some more scuffling sounds before whoever had the phone at the moment hung up.

“You gonna take some candy from babies next?” Tony asked him, a screwdriver in his mouth and three more down his shirt for easy access. He was hanging by his knees off a piece of orange casing and fiddling around inside of it. “Captain America gonna swipe some juice boxes from some cribs?”

“I’ve been told babies shouldn’t have those, anyway.” Steve got comfortable on the bench again. One of the robots made a protesting chirp when he nudged it out of the way. “Besides, Bucky’s the one taking the dog, and _receipt_ of stolen goods is only a misdemeanor. I have lots of misdemeanors.”

“You have lots of federal offenses, too,” Tony said, still not looking away from the orange thing. He reached inside and tried to muscle something in place. “Which have landed you on probation, which means you should probably maybe worry about a misdemeanor.”

“Eh,” Steve said, unworried. “Our anniversary is coming up. When can Captain America receive stolen goods if not on his anniversary?”

“Your funeral.” Tony made some grunting noises and jerked on whatever tool he had in hand. “And your federal summons again, probably. Can you pass up the engine now, Sleeping Beauty? I’m almost done, here.”

***

“You’re _taking my dog?_ ” Miles demanded, shrill, when Bucky stuffed his phone back into his pocket and turned around to glare at him.

“Kid,” Bucky said, feeling unbearably old. He rubbed at his temples, trying to stave off the stress headache. “You told me you live in an apartment in Queens. You can’t keep a velociraptor.”

“I’m not keeping her in my apartment!” Miles looked offended. “I’m keeping her in the park!”

“You’re keeping a velociraptor,” Bucky said after a shocked moment, “in a _public park_.”

“But she’s not a velociraptor!” Miles pleaded. Beside him, Peter was looking torn, like he wasn’t sure which side he should be on. 

“A public park,” Bucky repeated, aghast. “Where there are _people_.”

“She’s just a dog! She got experimented on and I saved her and it’s permanent, but she’s just a dog!”

“ _Kid,_ ” Bucky said again, louder this time, in the hopes volume would get it through Miles’ head. “Speaking as another involuntary science experiment that got set loose in a major metropolitan city, I think I can say pretty definitively that _no one is going to care_. Every government authority you have are going to see nothing but a monster, and she’s going to get locked up in a cage or killed. And _you_ are going to get the shit beaten out of you trying to stop it before _figuratively_ getting the shit beaten out of you when everything ends up in front of a terrified justice system. Your friends are all going to turn on you, you’ll end up fighting everyone at the airport, and then the only thing that'll stop your ass from being sent to floating island supermax is—” 

“Uh,” said Peter, looking at Bucky really hard. “Wait. Are we still talking about Churro?”

“And that’s the best case scenario!” Bucky ignored Peter and pointed at the guest room, where from the sound of it Churro had moved on from destroying the frantic last minute DIY window-casing-and-duct-tape Kong that Bucky had stuffed with peanut butter and tossed in, and was now shredding something Bucky likely didn’t want to know about. Hopefully not the board Bucky had hammered into place over the busted out wall to keep her inside. “She’s an untrained golden retriever with six inch long teeth and claws the size of my combat knife. What if she _hurts_ someone? What if she hurts a little kid?”

“You’re not listening to me, she’s not a dinosaur!” Miles shouted at him, near tears. “She’s a dog!”

“ _Dogs bite_ ,” Bucky snapped back. “I’m not telling you to put the thing down, which let me tell you, a _lot_ of people told Steve. I am telling you to let us figure out—”

“People told Captain America to put you down?” Peter blurted, and Miles looked horrified.

“Hell, Parker, _Sam_ told Steve to put me down,” Bucky yelled without thinking, and immediately regretted it when Peter make a choking noise and looked as anguished as Bucky had ever seen him. “Look. Peter. He was right,” Bucky went on more quietly. “Sam’s not an asshole. It was the helicarriers. And that’s exactly why we’re not going to let things get to that point with the dog.”

“ _Who_ said _what?_ ” Miles managed. “ _Why?_ ”

Ah, shit. Well. Bucky swallowed, took a deep breath, and got halfway through the word “Look,” when someone started pounding on the door. Both of the spiders ended up stuck to the ceiling again, and even Bucky jumped a little bit.

“ _Mister_ Barnes!” Concerned Fucking Patrick shouted through the storm door. “I know you’re holding kidnapped children in there! I’ve called the police!”

“Oh for _fuck’s sake_ ,” Bucky swore.

***

“What’s going on here,” Miles demanded the minute Peter closed the guest room door behind them. Peter locked it to buy himself some time. On the other side, Barnes was yelling something about privacy and harassment at his next door neighbor. “No more unexplained references. What’s wrong with Sergeant Barnes?”

“Well,” Peter said, scooching his way up the door to perch on the frame. “He was sort of… Did Captain Rogers save him from the Nazis in your dimension? Back in the war?”

Miles nodded sharply. Churro hopped over and nuzzled under Miles’ hand, and he gripped her around the neck without taking his eyes off Peter.

“Okay.” Peter flattened his lips in and thought about what to say. “Sergeant Barnes got a lot of experiments done on him then. And. Well, when he fell off the train and all, he survived long enough to. Uh. Get picked back up by the bad guys.”

“How is he _here_ ,” Miles demanded. “Why is everyone afraid of him?”

Peter rocked back and forth a few times, groaned, and finally dropped his head down and gave up on not blabbing. “He’s a supersoldier, too, and the bad guys brainwashed and tortured him into doing a lot of bad stuff. Like. Terrorism, executions and assassination type stuff. The helicarriers were when they tried to kill, like. All of New York and Sergeant Barnes shot Captain Rogers in the stomach. And, you know. Other places, too, I think. Three? Maybe? And there was some stabbing. Too.”

Miles stared at him.

Peter fidgeted. “But they both got better?”

“Oh my god,” Miles said slowly, his eyes almost the same size as the ones on his mask. “Oh my god, we’ve been living with a mass-murdering terrorist, no _wonder_ you’re so freaked out about everything.”

Peter frowned. “Hey, no,” he said, waving his hands, “I’m just really freaked out all the time. You’re always freaked out too! And it’s not like Barnes actually mass-murders very often _now_.”

“Very _often??_ ” Miles demanded, and stood up straighter. “Peter. You know this is crazy, right? You know this isn’t okay. This is why you’re afraid all the time!”

“They’re always bad guys!” Peter tried to assure him. “I know I’m afraid of Sergeant Barnes but I’m not like. _Afraid_ of him. I’m not like, _actually_ afraid of him. He’s not going to _actually hurt me_.”

And then Miles got this...face. He set his jaw and got really serious and squared his shoulders and _oh no_. “Peter,” Miles said sternly, scrambling up the doorframe and putting a calm hand on Peter’s shoulder. Peter looked at it. “Peter, I know you like Sergeant Barnes. And it’s okay to love people who do bad things. But sometimes the people we love aren’t always good people. We’ve all been there, it’s okay, but you need to go a different way and choose another path.”

“Woah,” Peter said. “Okay. One, your dimension does not sound like the nice dimension, for _real_ , and two, everyone in this house needs to stop projecting so much on everything around them.”

Miles gave his shoulder a squeeze, which, okay, Miles was thirteen and even if he weren’t, Peter had _enough super father figures already_ , thanks, and climbed back down. Churro, sensing something exciting was about to happen, wagged her tail and knocked over the lamp. 

“Anyway, you can figure that out on your own time, but right now we need to leave,” Miles decided, and Peter heard alarm bells as every spider sense went off at once. “We need to save Churro. I’m going home.”

“Uh!” Peter looked at the wall behind him. Sergeant Barnes and his neighbor were still shouting at each other about who’s side the police would be on when they showed up. “How?”

“We’re getting her to the people you keep talking about. We’re doing this now.” Miles ducked into the bathroom and brought out what Barnes had previously explained were cream egyptian cotton bath sheets, and Peter was _not to leave them on the floor again on pain of death_. Peter squeaked. “Here girl,” Miles said to Churro, and to Peter’s utter horror, tossed the towels over a two hundred pound velociraptor and wrapped her up inside. 

Churro’s tail, sticking out of the mound of luxury linens, wagged happily. There was the sound of tearing fabric. 

“This! Um!” Peter gripped the drywall until his fingers sank in, _oh god_. “This seems like a bad idea? I thought you didn’t trust them?”

“I don’t.” Miles turned back to him, enormous velociraptor/cotton burrito hoisted in his skinny superstrengthed arms. The look on his face was weirdly familiar, and Peter realized with a jolt that it was a look he’d seen on Captain Rogers’ face a _lot_. He suddenly felt a _really strong kinship_ to Sergeant Barnes when everyone around him was doing something he didn’t approve of. “We’re doing this ourselves. We’re sneaking in, we’re putting Churro through the portal generator they’re working on, and then I’m going home,” Miles said, heading for the window with his armload of reptile.

“We’re going to— hold on.” Peter vaulted across the room to block the window, hands outstretched. “Wait. Think. You’re keeping Churro in a park. You don’t have a plan for winter. If anyone finds her, she’s going to be an experiment again, and you don’t know any supers in your universe to help you. Anything could happen to her! Sergeant Barnes is right, you can’t take her back to that.”

“You can’t keep second guessing everything!” Miles did an about face and went for the door instead. Peter made a miserable noise and followed him, because what else was he going to do? He couldn’t abandon another spiderperson in their hour of need.“You have to take a leap of faith. Things work out!”

“How is this going to just _work out_ ,” Peter demanded, but Miles was already out the bedroom door and down the hallway. Peter scrambled to keep up. “This is a bad idea. This is a really bad idea. Are you just going to take Churro on the bus? On the _subway_? Don’t you think someone might notice? How exactly do you plan to _smuggle a dinosaur_ from Westchester to Stark Tower in _downtown Manhattan?_ ”

***

“—and furthermore,” Concerned Patrick was complaining, “Your bedelia has absolutely smothered my roses. I won’t allow it! You have systematically suborned every government agency against me, but they can’t ignore—”

“Wait,” Bucky snapped, attention pulled away from wishing he could smother _Patrick_ with his bedelia. The spiders had gone… really quiet. Barnes had babysat his own sisters enough in the forties to know this was never a good thing, and they hadn’t even had superpowers and a velociraptor. Not to mention the Care and Training of Steve Rogers masterclass. “Hold on. Something’s happening.”

“You are certainly _correct_ , Concerned Patrick sniffed. “What’s happening is _justice!_ ”

“No, shut up, I’m trying to listen,” Bucky snapped, waving his hands in the international gesture for _button it, asshole_. “Are they in the… Why the hell would they…”

“I can’t find it,” Peter was wailing at a distance. “I can’t find it! Oh well! I guess we—”

“We don’t have time for the _remote_ ,” Miles cut him off, and then Bucky Barnes watched his custom Frenchporte garage doors explode in a shower of glass and splinters as Miles Fucking Morales drove Bucky’s spotless Toyota Prius right through them, over the miniature boulders around his rosemary bushes, knocked over Bucky’s mailbox reversing onto the street, and fishtailed his way out onto the main road with Peter Goddamn Parker whey-faced and horrified in the back seat, clutching a dinosaur wrapped to the neck in Bucky’s good guest towels.

Bucky slowly lowered his hands.

“This is exactly the kind of thing I’m talking about,” said Concerned Patrick after a moment, and Bucky nearly went back to submarine prison on the spot.

***

“Oh my god,” Peter said to Miles, throat a little sore from screaming and arms locked tight around the squirming death lizard in his lap as Miles swerved through traffic. “Oh my god. You’re me. You’re not another future Spiderman like you said. You’re actually me. I’m stuck in a combination remake of It’s A Wonderful Life and A Christmas Carol where I have to watch myself make all my decisions from the outside without even the usual minor control I have over them.”

“For someone who’s me,” Miles said, jerking the steering wheel sharply to the left and almost taking out three potted trees and an ornamental fence, “you sure do a lot of complaining about it. I’m here saving the day and all you can do is poke holes in my plans and get upset about towels.”

“Oh my god,” Peter said, staring blindly through tinted glass. “I’m not even _me_ in this remake. I’m Sergeant _Barnes_.”

“Well you better stop it, then,” Miles ordered, taking the entrance for the expressway. Barely. “I really don’t need another spiderman as my next supervillain. Open a window, Churro’s too big for this car, she’s getting cramped.”

“Yeah, you’re right, she is too big for this car,” Peter told him, refusing to help out with this anymore. “Maybe we shouldn’t do this and maybe we should go back and think for a second!”

Churro, excited about all the zooming and shouting, helpfully knocked out the window with her face to grin toothily at a toddler in the backseat of a passing Subaru. The toddler waved back with both hands. 

“Sergeant Barnes isn’t a supervillain anyway!” Peter shouted over the rushing wind and furious New York drivers outside. Everyone was laying on their horns like Miles’ free-wheeling approach to changing lanes at enhanced reflex speeds was the worst thing that had happened to them all month, giant chinchillas included, and it wasn’t that Peter disagreed so much as it was only making his anxiety about it all worse. “He’s married to _Captain America_. You can’t be a supervillain and marry _Captain America_ no matter how many times he’s been arrested.”

“ _Arrested?_ ” Miles demanded, inexpertly dodging a semi and almost taking out a delivery van doing it. “In this dimension Captain America is a bad guy _too_? You need to get your act together and start doing something about this place, Peter!”

Peter threw up his hands in frustration and only succeeded in giving Churro more give inside the towels. She chirped in delight as her tail speared through the remaining backseat window. Broken glass and every piece of paper in the car were flying through the air and Peter could barely make himself heard over the din. “Captain Rogers is a hero!” he bellowed, fighting to keep a grip on Churro while she tried to put half her body out the window and get her nose into the wind. “The government agencies he takes down are super corrupt and full of Nazis, and he only breaks international law if he _has_ to! And Sergeant Barnes was _brainwashed_ , it’s not like he killed that one president for _fun!_ ”

“Yeah, sure, corruption, we’re all brainwashed by society, but Peter!” Miles shouted back. “ _Some of us are a little more brainwashed than others_ , okay? Okay??”

“What??” Peter yelled. “No, like _actually_ brainwashed! Look, can we pull over? I can’t think, it’s too loud, you’ve hit eight cars and everyone around us has definitely noticed the _velociraptor hanging out of the car_. Can we just take _one minute_ to figure out what we’re doing before _every alphabet agency in New York_ does first??”

“Hey, do you know where the clutch is?” Miles asked, distracted from Peter’s _very good points_ by his total incomprehension of anything at all about the vehicle he was currently driving. “My Dad said something about a clutch, but I don’t know what it is. Is it like, making sure all the doors close all the way? I guess I’m doing okay if the car’s not beeping, though.”

“We’re all going to die,” Peter told Churro, “and it will not be my fault this time,” and she swung her head around to lick his face before she went nuts trying to get at the cat in a neighboring car.


End file.
